A Study On The Differences Between Peer And Teacher Participation In Senior High School Students’ Dialogue Journal Writing

There have been great changes taking place in EFL teaching over years and theyare profoundly manifested in English writing teaching. Many researchers and scholarsendeavor to explore and discover effective methods, so as to arouse students’ writinginterest and furthermore to improve their writing competence. However, traditionalteaching methods about English writing fail to stimulate students’ interest due to thefact that they only offer limited topics for students to choose and students’compositions are written to be judged and corrected by the teacher. Hence, dialoguejournal writing which focuses more on interaction between two co-participants thanon choice of words, cohesive ties, and rhetorical complexity, maybe a good way tosolve the problem.The paper mainly studies the effects of dialogue journal writing on students’attitudes towards English writing skills and themselves as writers. Besides, it is alsointended to find the differences between peer and teacher participation in dialoguejournal writing and the reasons for these differences. Questionnaire and writing testhave been used as research instruments in this study. The research subject istwenty-four senior high school students of Grade One, whose English writingproficiency varies. They are ranked in higher-level, middle-level and lower-levelEnglish writing proficiency, according to their performance in the Senior High SchoolEntrance Examination.Before the writing test, all participants conduct a questionnaire for the author toknow their self-evaluation of their English writing skills and themselves as writer.After the writing test, these participants finish another questionnaire, aiming at testinghow they assess their English writing and themselves as writer. The comparisonbetween the two results can show the effects of dialogue journal writing on students’attitudes towards English writing skills and themselves as writers.These participants are given a pre-test of English writing and after writingdialogue journal for two months, a post-test English writing is held. The standards ofmarking the composition are the same. Independent sample T test is carried out toshow the improvement of dialogue journaling on students’ English writing. Teacher’sparticipation and peers’ participation are done separately to display which one is muchmore effective.The research results of this paper show that peer participation is more effective than teacher participation in dialogue journaling on improve students’ evaluation ofthemselves as writer. As for the improvement of their English writing skills, peerparticipation is more effective for higher-level students. For middle-level students,teacher participation is better. However, both peer participation and teacherparticipation cannot improve the English writing skills of lower-level students.Dialogue journaling gives students more topics to discuss. Higher-level studentsrespond to more topics than initiating topics and middle-level and lower-levelstudents are better at initiation of topics. Higher-level students can explore a topicwith more words no matter they write to peers or the teacher. However, teacherparticipation will obviously make students respond to topics more frequently withmore words. Teacher participation does make lower-level students respond constantlybut they write fewer words. Dialogue journal cannot improve the complexity of thewriting language. Therefore, students’ different levels of writing proficiency need tobe considered whenever they write dialogue journal with peers or teachers.